Abstract
This study sought to understand the prevalence of childhood abuse in Italy using an instrument developed by the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) and adapted to the Italian context. The study participants were 312 young adults, 106 males (34%), and 206 females (64%), aged 18–24 years, from various northwest Italian universities and workplaces, using an ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool retrospective questionnaire (ICAST-R). With reference to comparative data from other countries, the Italian context reveals a high incidence of emotional abuse (62%) followed by physical abuse (44%) and sexual abuse (18%). While males reported more physical abuse, females reported more exposure to sexual and emotional abuse. Moreover, the validity of the ICAST instrument was evaluated. The internal consistency for the three subscales was similar to the findings of previous studies, with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.51 for emotional abuse to 0.59 for sexual abuse. We observe that children undergo forms of emotional and physical maltreatment for disciplinary purposes, and for this reason, such abuse is excused. Greater prevention measures should be adopted in this direction. Finally, our study has contributed to the validation of the ICAST-R instrument for use in the Italian context.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments, or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Individual informed consent to take part in the research was collected from young adults, along with written consent describing the nature and objective of the study according to the ethical code of the Italian Association for Psychology. The consent stated that data confidentiality would be assured and that participation was voluntary. The study was approved by the IRB of the University of Turin (Approval Number: 47096).
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Prino, L.E., Longobardi, C. & Settanni, M. Young Adult Retrospective Reports of Adverse Childhood Experiences: Prevalence of Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Abuse in Italy. Arch Sex Behav 47, 1769–1778 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1154-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1154-2